I don’t read much BernardJ. What are you, his wingman? 🙂 Is he still stalking me to see if I know neutral pH = 7.0? LOL. Let’s hope the yahoos will leave this thread alone. Anyway thanks again for the heavy metal enlightenment.

I hear quite a few of these pseudointellectual chunderstorms have condescended on you lately…

“And that’s why we try to explain to chameleon that you don’t mindlessly accept the untested claims of any scientist. You look for claims that have survived scrutiny – that are the outcome of the scientific process. Maybe you’ll have better luck explaining that to her.”

… and I hope you’ll think of Brad’s Place as a kind of asylum.

An asylum of sanity, lucidity and good faith in a world of Mindlessly, Claims, Scrutiny, Untested, Accept, Survived, Claim, …

Let me share a quotation that comes damn close, I think, to saying what I hope Brad’s Place will come to mean in our lvies and for generations of deltoids to come.

“The measure of good science is neither the politics of the scientist nor the people with whom the scientist associates. It is the immersion of hypotheses into the acid of truth.That’s the hard way to do it, but it’s the only way that works.”

It was an op-ed by Ted Koppel, who’s Not Even A Scientist… but don’t you think his words hit closer to the heart of the thing than our mutual lecturer’s? 🙂

BTW Bill just popped in to the jan thread and answered BJ’s pop quiz.
7 or if we are talking ranges 6.5 – 7.5.
Yes @ Brad,
I do like that quote.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the tribe of ‘ritual intellectual humiliation’ will somehow condescend at you quoting it though!
Can Brad’s world also have a deny/alist/ism meter?
Maybe you could give a gold star or something to the one who manages to use it the most in one comment at the end of each page?
Maybe 2 stars if they can specify exactly what is being denied when the word is used.
Maybe half stars for synonyms?

When Tim first asked me if I’d be willing to contribute a whole thread to scienceblogs, I was honoured to be singled out. One of the reasons I gladly agreed was that I think we can make something special here. And that will involve, among other things, regular use of the scienceblogs blogging platform’s denialinguistics analytics functionality.

@Vince points out that I’m “a pathetic liar” as if it’s come kind of epiphany.

Hey, Vince:

Have I ever claimed to be good at lying? No.
Have I ever claimed to be good at bull-fighting? No.

And like most people I have the sense to do what I’m good at and avoid what I’m pathetic at. Anything less will get you gored.

By the way:

What I lack in lie-telling skillz, I make up for in lie-detecting. Lying will not avail you at Brad’s Place.

Our friend Vince may recall (as if it were yesterday!) what happened when a certain deltoid pretended the Hockey Stick reconstruction of historical temperatures had been “confirmed” as “correct” by the BEST stud. Before I’d even had a chance to read the comment, no less a personage than Lotharsson himself jumped in to urge the liar to admit the claim was 75% untrue just in case I came across it.

When Lotharsson tells you it’s a bad idea to make stuff up when I’m around, believe me: he knows what he’s talking about.

So then, you were telling the truth and the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study agrees with Mann’s conclusions that there was no coherent MWP, or that even if there was, it fell short of late 1990s temperatures? (How much warmer does the BEST study say we are now compared to, say, the maximum medieval temperature?)

You weren’t just making things up: the BEST study showed relatively stable temperatures for many centuries—the “shaft”—until an unprecedented upturn around 1900, just as Michael Mann et al. have been trying to tell us?

Is this true Vince? Have I underestimated your probity and/or affinity with reality?

How? BEST only goes back to about 1750 AD, Hockey stick controversy is about reconstructions for temps ~900yrs ago ~ the MWP. BEST doesn’t say anything about this, how can it show the Hockey stick is correct?

How many syllables in the word UNIONIZED? Isn’t that what you’re really asking me?

Go ahead and think I skipped high school chemistry. Go ahead and think I never learnt to read without moving my lips, on account a’ me being stuck in the revolving door of the penal system ever since I stole my first car at the age of 9.

Nobody cares.

Can’t we go back to our deal, where you refuse to talk to me until I dignify your retarded little shibboleth with my attention?

You see, pH is very temperature dependent, so the pH at which neutrality occurs at one temperature is different to that at which neutral pH occurs at another temperature. To illustrate, cast your eye over these values:

Putting this into a concentration context this means that for pure water neutral pH, at boiling point and at sea level, has 21.4 times as many hydronium ions in solution as does a pH neutral water sample at the point of freezing.

Are you seeing where this is going?

At boiling point, pH 6.2 is basic.

At freezing point, pH 7.4 is acidic.

It’s worse for you though, because pressure affects pH, especially when there are other compounds in the aqueous solution. Isotopic composition also alters pH response.

The short of it is that there is no unique pH that defines neutrality, and there is no unique hydronium ion concentration in water that defines pH neutrality. When chemists refer to acidification, all that it means is that the concentration of hydronium ions is increasing.

This is the important thing, and in the case of ocean acidification it is a serious threat to hydronium ion-sensitive calcifers.

And Brad, I’m not sure what febrile sweating invoked the question you put to me, but the answer is a resounding “NO”. Where on earth did you dig out references to unionisation? Or is this just a lame attempt at the logical fallacy of guilt by association?

Nobody asked for a lecture. Nobody sat for an exam. I never responded to your question, but if you really feel the need to use your red pen, use it on Conspiracy Queen Oreskes, erroneous even in her Errata!, who foists on the public this simplistic and comforting lie…..

I won’t read your whole comment—I’ll leave it for those who have a dog in the OA race, which I don’t—but I do note that you take it on yourself to tell me how chemists speak. “When chemists say… it means…”

But Bernard, what comes across unmistakably obviously is that you’re not a chemist, are you?

When a chemist is asked:

How many syllables in the word UNIONIZED?

he/she doesn’t reply:

“the answer is a resounding “NO”. Where on earth did you dig out references to unionisation? Or is this just a lame attempt at the logical fallacy of guilt by association?”

“Same place he digs out all his “facts” from: his anus. Well, it’s the only thing he can see. That and the stick rammed up there…”

When Tim approached me with the idea of expanding my regular contributions to his site into a whole thread of my own, I said Yes, yes, yes. Let’s do this. Creatively, one of the goals we both had, I think, was to make Brad’s Place a bit more sophisticated, polite or whatever than your standard entropic, polemical, peripatetic shitfight, into which other threads seem to monotonically decline.

So right from the start, we’ve enforced and expected a certain tone from the commenters here, Wow.

Sorry Brad, can I just check your #17, so Orsekes in the errata to her book states that Neutral pH is 7, and from Bernard’s post, he has come with some pedantic scheme to prove her wrong?

The next point obviously is, what’s got into Bernard? has he seen the light at last, critically evaluating everything he’s told?

It’s a positive turn of events, but I think his criticism of her is nit-picking somewhat. A Neutral pH of 7 at STP is routinely stated, often without the STP (it’s assumed), a bit lazy perhaps but everyone understands the common meaning.
Where’s Bernard coming from on this?
😉

So, GSW, you agree Brat has it wrong and moreover that he has “educated” himself not from the primary literature but by a book for Joe Homeowner.

And you also agree that he’s wrong when he claims he knows better than Jeff or Bernard, despite his claims that he knows not only better than they, but all other chemistry scientists what Acididy is all about.

Where is GSW going with this…?

It’s not going to help Brat. Quite the opposite, it’s devastated his empty claims.

If you read the afterdribble of his comment it appears Wow and Bernard have come to believe, in a kind of folie a deux, that I’m fighting them on the “ocean acidification” idea.

One might assume this was the continuation of a long and inane debate about “OA” from another thread.

It isn’t.

As far as I’m aware, I haven’t opined, declaimed, written or even thought about OA in months, and I certainly haven’t been haggling over it with these two. If I ever mentioned OA it must have been a throwaway line—I don’t care about, have any real position on, or have any interest in the topic.

Given that neither I nor anybody else on this thread was talking about OA until this father-and-son doorknocking team burst in, I think it’s the height of Bible-bashing boorishness on their part to inflict their boring obsession on my guests.

(Bernard, I’m begging you, as the adult of the pair, to take Wow and “ocean acidification” to someone that cares about them. You’re welcome at Brad’s Place any time, of course, but please be considerate and take your cue from what the other adults are talking about, and not what you’re itching to lecture someone on. Just because we’re nodding politely doesn’t mean it’s a Successful Social Interaction, OK?)

Cat owners sometimes say that if you give a domestic cat nothing to do and nowhere to go, its brain, every few hours, “invents” little targets for it to chase (presumably mice or something). When my friend’s cat spontaneously tears down the hall, my friend says it’s “hallucinating.”

Something like that may be going on here.

Wow is floridly inventing all sorts of statements and opinions on my part:

“he claims he knows better than Jeff or Bernard, despite his claims that he knows not only better than they, but all other chemistry scientists what Acididy is all about. … Quite the opposite, it’s devastated his empty claims. … “

Wow, WHERE did I claim I know better than them or other “chemistry scientists” [a.k.a. chemists]?

WHAT empty claims is Bernard “devastating”?

If you can’t QUOTE me—which you won’t be able to—that’s because you’re SEEING THINGS, kiddo.

Sometimes though, when he’s really testing the limit of my tolerance for other people’s children, Wow says something that makes me wonder… is it all a brilliant parody?

“See also your delusions about “creativity” and what happened in your head as opposed to in reality. It’s another technique of the 14 year old. Fantasies.”

LOL.

This may be the funniest shit you’ve written, Wow, since you criticised me for judging that fanatical cleric Abu Hamza without “sharing drinks with him” and getting to know him!

You should Brad, because it underscores the point that neutral pH is not the fixed thing that you and many others imagine. Stop being cut up because I pointed out that you couldn’t raise this issue, even after you had four days to look up the answer.

But Bernard, what comes across unmistakably obviously is that you’re not a chemist, are you?

When a chemist is asked:

How many syllables in the word UNIONIZED?

he/she doesn’t reply:

“the answer is a resounding “NO”. Where on earth did you dig out references to unionisation?

Brad, you clearly can’t even parse your own posts. To remind you what you typed at #14 above, read this – you can let your lips move if it helps with comprehension:

How many syllables in the word UNIONIZED? Isn’t that what you’re really asking me?

Look carefully at my post at #15. I copied that line exactly, and it is obviously your second question to which I was responding.

Perhaps you were hoping that I would say “it depends” so that you didn’t have to put your head in a noose and commit to a particular answer yourself about pH, but that’s just erecting straw men. The fact is that you’re fixating on an openly-recognised typo. And you are avoiding the fact that anyone who says that the oceans are “not acidifying” is simply wrong.

You should Brad, because it underscores the point that neutral pH is not the fixed thing that you and many others imagine. Stop being cut up because I pointed out that you couldn’t raise this issue, even after you had four days to look up the answer.

But Bernard, what comes across unmistakably obviously is that you’re not a chemist, are you?

When a chemist is asked:

How many syllables in the word UNIONIZED?

he/she doesn’t reply:

“the answer is a resounding “NO”. Where on earth did you dig out references to unionisation?

Brad, you clearly can’t even parse your own posts. To remind you what you typed at #14 above, read this – you can let your lips move if it helps with comprehension:

How many syllables in the word UNIONIZED? Isn’t that what you’re really asking me?

Look carefully at my post at #15. I copied that line exactly, and it is obviously your second question to which I was responding.

Perhaps you were hoping that I would say “it depends” so that you didn’t have to put your head in a noose and commit to a particular answer yourself about pH, but that’s just erecting straw men. The fact is that you’re fixating on an openly-recognised typo. And you are avoiding the fact that anyone who says that the oceans are “not acidifying” is simply wrong.

You should Brad, because it underscores the point that neutral pH is not the fixed thing that you and many others imagine. Stop being cut up because I pointed out that you couldn’t raise this issue, even after you had four days to look up the answer.

But Bernard, what comes across unmistakably obviously is that you’re not a chemist, are you?

When a chemist is asked:

How many syllables in the word UNIONIZED?

he/she doesn’t reply:

“the answer is a resounding “NO”. Where on earth did you dig out references to unionisation?

Brad, you clearly can’t even parse your own posts. To remind you what you typed at #14 above, read this – you can let your lips move if it helps with comprehension:

How many syllables in the word UNIONIZED? Isn’t that what you’re really asking me?

Look carefully at my post at #15. I copied that line exactly, and it is obviously your second question to which I was responding.

Perhaps you were hoping that I would say “it depends” so that you didn’t have to put your head in a noose and commit to a particular answer yourself about pH, but that’s just erecting straw men. The fact is that you’re fixating on an openly-recognised typo. And you are avoiding the fact that anyone who says that the oceans are “not acidifying” is simply wrong.

Why are you stalking me? Have I led you on by expressing interest in your pet topic, the hydronium ion?

If so, I’m sorry. I’m not interested.

Have you got me mixed up with someone else, Bernard? Has some other denier been asserting the invariability of pH neutrality over all pressures and temperatures?

Do all we deniers look alike to you? That’s a little offensive, frankly!

LOL

“You should Brad, because it underscores the point that neutral pH is not the fixed thing that you and many others imagine.”

I don’t imagine it’s any such thing. I’m well aware it depends on pressure and temperature. I just don’t care.

Besides Naomi Oreskes, who else thinks neutral pH is a constant? Who are these “many others” who imagine so? (Well, probably most people do—I had no idea how mutlifactorial it was until university.) Why not go bore them?

NOBODY AT BRAD’S PLACE CARES.

” Stop being cut up because I pointed out that you couldn’t raise this issue, even after you had four days to look up the answer.”

What makes you think I’d waste a minute looking up an answer to a question only you and Wow care about?

” And you are avoiding the fact that anyone who says that the oceans are “not acidifying” is simply wrong.”

No, I’m really not; I just don’t care.

Bernard, the fact that you thought the “UNIONIZED” test was about unionisation and “guilt by association” is simply hilarious.

Relax, mate. It was a test of your chemistry background. So you’re not a chemist. So what? Not the end of the world.

Seeing it in the context of what appeared to be a pattern of inattention to detail was what raised questions.

But that appearance was largely bogus, I think. The beryllium example is a good one. Her usage of it was defensible.

If she compulsively made these mistakes, it might mean something—and some people on my “side” have been wrongly led to believe Oreskes is some sort of bimbo, or scientist lite, or celebrity scientist. I believed that for a while. It’s not true. Whatever else one thinks of her, she’s no lightweight and we’re doing ourselves a disservice by underestimating her IQ.

I read Oreskes’ characterisation of beryllium (“a heavy metal”) as meaning: “a heavy metallic element.” I hadn’t seen your definition of heavy metals before (nor did I even know it was a thorny question).

It’s obvious that Oreskes knew what she was saying there and that Berylliumgate has been a waste of everyone’s time. My apologies to everyone who was bored by it.

bill is right: “This ‘heavy metal’ thing is the most pointless pedantry imaginable.”

What a fool I’ve been. What a handsome fool.

2. Since I’d been mistaken on that idea for the last 3 years, I felt I should re-examine some other questions I’ve raised about Oreskes’ craft.

3. I now consider the DDT one also to be a complete non-issue, but here’s the link if you want to listen:

DDT “was not a magic bullet to cure malaria that its advocates are claiming”” Where did Oreskes make this claim?

Fast forward to the 23:40 mark.

You may know that we all became a bit polarised around here….!

• I said the reference to DDT as a product “to cure” malaria (effective or otherwise) was a shibboleth for medical-[il]literacy

• everyone else said it was a reasonable verb

Both these extreme positions are false, and constitute a false dichotomy.

Nobody saw the “third way” because we were too busy fighting.

Sorry, people: you can’t call a mosquito-eradication program a “cure for malaria.”

How about we call a condom-distribution, needle-exchange drive a “cure for HIV/AIDS”?

Words mean things.

Nuking every mosquito and its larvae wouldn’t cure malaria. It would just prevent infections.

What Oreskes said was nonsense.

How are we going to get around this? What’s the third way? The one nobody here—not Lotharsson, not any other believalist—was clever enough to think of? Well, I was clever enough:

The third way is to bear in mind that people MISSPEAK. Medically-literate people say medically-illiterate things by accident.

As Oreskes did. What impressed me on listening to the full interview yesterday—I’d only heard a minute or so of it previously—was that Oreskes does take care to put the terms “prevent”, “treat”, “eradicate”, “control” and “cure” in the correct places, and apparently knows how. She only misspeaks once. Her speech makes the null hypothesis (that she has no medical theory and is more-or-less guessing) astronomically improbable!

Rather irritated (at myself et al.) about the time I’ve wasted prosecuting trivia against Oreskes. ￼

Bottom line: Oreskes is a lot more careful and knowledgeable than I realised. A lot of people on my “side” are underestimating Oreskes’ intelligence. And looking petty for insulting it. ”

I think you may be right BradK,
Bernard may be confused about identity here.
BTW BradK,
Impressive and balanced comment re Oreskes.
It could easily have been a poor proof reading/editing of typo mishap. The proof reader may not have known the accepted definition of neutral PH….which despite BJ’s long and thrice repeated lecture…does have a simple answer.
I can’t imagine Oreskes would have wanted to correct that mistake by inserting Bernard’s lecture in its place.
It should have been corrected as 7 in this context or there is also a case for discussing a range which is commonly accepted as 6.5 to 7.5 for the purpose of something like this book.
I also like your attitude re
1) Admitting an error if you have made one and
2) Forgiving others if they have made an error.
Good for you Brad K!
You could do much to lift the tone of commenting here.
It would be great if more people could see the ‘third way’ because they weren’t so busy fighting and boxing at shadows!

So then, you were telling the truth and the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study agrees with Mann’s conclusions that there was no coherent MWP,

GSW says

Hockey stick controversy is about reconstructions for temps ~900yrs ago ~ the MWP.

Considering the Deniers’ first (vapid) criticism of Mann’s hockey stick was that it excluded the period of the hypothesised Mediaeval Warm Period, it’s hilarious to see you get your stories wrong now by claiming it covered that period but excluded the relevant data.

As for thie Mediaeval Warm Period the deniers hang their hats on – I wonder if there is room for scepticism about what that period’s temperatures were like?

Evidence for regional warmth during medieval times can be found in a diverse but more limited set of records including ice cores, tree rings, marine sediments, and historical sources from Europe and Asia, but the exact timing and duration of warm periods may have varied from region to region, and the magnitude and geographic extent of the warmth are uncertain.

Presently available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since A.D. 900. The uncertainties associated with reconstructing hemispheric mean or global mean temperatures from these data increase substantially backward in time through this period and are not yet fully quantified.

Very little confidence can be assigned to statements concerning the hemispheric mean or global mean surface temperature prior to about A.D. 900 because of sparse data coverage and because the uncertainties associated with proxy data and the methods used to analyze and combine them are larger than during more recent time periods.

Instead of desperately and loudly trying to spin spin spin your way out of this, how about finding a quote from the BEST study (or any of their press conferences… or any of their team members…) sharing your opinion that the BEST study confirmed the correctness of the “Hockey Stick” of Mann et al.?

Have you got me mixed up with someone else, Bernard? Has some other denier been asserting the invariability of pH neutrality over all pressures and temperatures?

Brad, you made no mention of temperature or of pressure until after I raised the issue, despite the fact that I gave you four days of thinking time with which to respond to my question. You are introducing another straw man, but that is hardly surprising as that is your one of your favoured logical fallacies of first resort.

Ignoring your attempt at yet another red herring, there are two issues that you raised. The first is that of whether oceans are acidifying when pH decrease is occurring above neutral pH. Do you remember this post at #8 of page 3 on the January thread?

@bill nails it:

“(Did you encounter our ‘Atmospheric Chemistry Graduate’ a few days back who was running the ‘OA ain’t acidification because the pH will still be above 7′ line?)”

How long until this phraudulent ”pH 7.0” phallacy has insinuated itself into every single corner of the Faux Skeptic flat-earthosphere?

Poor, poor denihilists. So close. You would have had, at long last, a valid and devastating argument on your hands, and those venal alarmist sudoscyentiztz would have been shame-bound to concede that the entire mendacious language of “acidification” was nothing but science-as-an-extension-of-politics…

… if only you’d known a basic scientific fact which, uh, most 13-year-old children know. If only you ‘d known what actual, er, experts think the pH of a neutral solution is.

It’s remarkable that anyone claiming to be scientifically-literate could have gotten this wrong—nevertheless, dear, denihilist dilettantes, read it and weep weakly acidic tears:

“Yet its rain had a measured pH of 4 or less (neutral pH is 6, ordinary rain is around 5); one sample measured 2.85—about the same as lemon juice, acidic enough to bum a cut.”

In your trainwreck of logic you first attempt to dismiss the matter of acidification above pH 7 by saying that it would have been “a valid and devastating argument… if only you’d known a basic scientific fact …”. Perhaps in your mind this reads as something else, but any rational person would see this as an attempt to;

Further, you said in the quoted screed above “If only you ‘d known what actual, er, experts think the pH of a neutral solution is”, to which I responded by attempting to ascertain whether you actually knew what experts know about the pH of a neutral solution, but after four days you could not answer the question. It seems a little rich to me that you would mock others about commentary on pH when you cannot provide accurate and informed information yourself.

But perhaps that’s just me…

And Brad, I have never claimed to be a chemist. But I seem to know a damned sight more about pH than do you, if your fumbling evasions on this and the open thread are any indication.

“In the hockey stick controversy, graphs showing reconstructions of the temperature record of the past 1000 years”

What is the point of pretending you are unaware of MBH 1999? also refering to the the graphic on the right of that page,

“Figure 2.20 from the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) of 2001, based on Mann, Bradley & Hughes 1999 (MBH99), became the iconic hockey stick graph.”

See the” iconic hockey stick graph” – MBH99! I mean I’d be the last person to argue that you are not as daft as a box of spanners, but do you have to put on such a show?

Anyway the question was, how can a temp series that only goes back to 1750 AD possibly tell you anthing about temps hundred of years before? and in particular, show the Hockey stick was correct about temps during a previous warm period, the MWP.

Is this just a personal view of yours or is it something you picked up from somewhere else (sks perhaps, they produce all kinds of weird and wonderful things).

It’s funny how those who want to push an idea of “uncertainty” about the well-established fact of recent unprecedented warming get so hung up about the mostly unsupported conjecture about a supposed “MWP”.

Apparently deniers’ scepticism only works one way.

MBH98 was the birth of the “hockey stick”.
Confirmed by many subsequent reconstructions, after criticism from the paid-disinformation lobby and their useful idiots that it didn’t go back far enough, it was then extended back to about 900 without any controversy except that manufactured by those merchants of doubt whose scepticism only works when it co-incides with their politics.

Political ideologues have been polluting the world’s media with their lies and stupidity for a couple of decades now (longer if you count the same activity whilst in the pay of the tobacco companies).

The fun thing about trolling you lot of intellectual pygmies is that you are paid to keep coming back for more.

More projection from one of the nutcases that treat crank-blog WUWT as a valid source for information.

MBH98 was the “Hockey Stick”.
Not sure what Wikipedia says, and not too interested in it – I get my knowledge from more reliable sources, although I understand why the likes of GSW stick with Wikipedia.

Vince!
Pay attention!
Unless you’re pretending there was no MWP you need to understand time frames.
BEST does not use the same start/stop timeframes.
It neither confirms or disproves Mann’s work!
Unless you have access to BEST information that no one else has, you need to rethink your ‘confirm’ assertion.

But.. but Vince.. it’s all they’ve got to convince themselves that they’re not living in exceptional times. Belief in the fictional allows them to switch off and believe their responsibility to the present has beern discharged.

Of course there’s no comeback against the liars and operatives who sold the lie, and neither does there need to be. The believers will defend the lie because it’s all they’ve got and reality – as defined by actual data – can never compete against a golden age, especially an imaginary one.

BernardJ, I know you belong to a cult of humorlessness, so it was stupid of me to expect you to understand facetiousness. I apologise. The “unionized” shibboleth comes from a famous remark by Asimov. It seemed apt, as you appeared to be following me all over the internet, itching for a chance to subject me to your personal litmus test.

Lest there be any confusion:

I’m not accusing you of falsely claiming to be anything you’re not.

OK?

”But I seem to know a damned sight more about pH than do you,”

Guess what: you CARE a damned sight more about pH than I do, too.

”if your fumbling evasions on this and the open thread are any indication.”

I wasn’t trying “evade” your question, I was trying to avoid your question, and you, and this situation we’re in right now, because I just knew it was going to be your cue to segue into a 2-hour lecture I have no interest in sitting through.

You know that intense, tedious monomaniac who seems to be at every party, the one nobody wants to make eye-contact with, and if they do, they try not to be inveigled into a dialogue with him, and if they are, they try not to mention any of his trigger words?

That guy is you, and nobody was trying to “evade” the lecture you gave, gave, and gave us again, so much as “avoid” it.

Your single interesting point, if I’ve skimmed you correctly, seems to be that “acidification” is a perfectly legitimate term for what’s happening in the oceans, whether or not they actually become “acid” (subneutral in pH) for their particular pressure/temperature conditions.

If (HINT ! HINT !) you made this point a lot better, without burying it in so much pious, didactic fibre, we’d be more inclined to read (and even agree with?) your soliloquies, Brad’s Place is, after all, a temple of learning, reflecting, confessing, and correcting—an oasis of skepticism in a desert of dogma.

Your beloved icon the “hockey stick” is so-called because of the sharp rise in temperature shown throughout the 20th Century, is it not?

No.

The sporting equipment analogy is almost entirely (~80%) due to the long, straight “shaft” FOLLOWED by the “blade” (~20%).

But you knew that, didn’t you.

In fact, the only reason the “blade” (an imperceptibly slow improvement in the world’s weather over the last couple of centuries) can even be described as “sharp” or “dramatic” by otherwise sensible adults, with a straight face, is that it was allegedly preceded by almost a millennium of even LESS dramatic climate change.

From Muller in 2004:
That discovery hit me like a bombshell, and I suspect it is having the same effect on many others. Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics. How could it happen?[11]
He went on to state “If you are concerned about global warming (as I am) and think that human-created carbon dioxide may contribute (as I do), then you still should agree that we are much better off having broken the hockey stick. Misinformation can do real harm, because it distorts predictions.”[11]
From Muller after the release of BEST
the BEST project did not delve into the proxy data sets used in the “hockey stick”, the importance of the work regarding the modern temperature record is explained on the BEST web site:
Existing data used to show global warming have met with much criticism. The Berkeley Earth project attempts to resolve current criticism of the former temperature analyses by making available an open record to enable rapid response to further criticism and suggestions. Our results include our best estimate for the global temperature change and our estimates of the uncertainties in the record.[15]

Hilariously, Chameleon reminds us what Muller mistakenly asserted in 2004,

Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics.

Of course, BEST has now proven that Muller was wrong in 2004, and that MBH98 is correct in 1998.

As Muller himself had to admit after finding out that the data contradicted his previous position:

“The world temperature data has sufficient integrity to be used to determine temperature trends,” Muller told the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.

BEST’s preliminary results show a warming trend of 0.7 degrees Celsius since 1957. That result, which Muller called “unexpected,” is similar to the findings of independent analyses by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.K. Hadley Centre.

See that “unexpected” in there? That’s Muller telling you that you are wrong.
What he’s saying is that the crank nonsense from crank-blogger Anthony Watts’ crank blog called WUWT is wrong, and that the scientific consensus among climate scientists turns out to have been (unsurprisingly to normal people) correct after all.

Ummm Vince?
The question is about your assertion that MBH98 and the hockey stick is CONFIRMED by BEST.
Notice he says NOTHING AT ALL about MBH98 and/or the Hockey Stick?
My question and my link above also has sweet fa to do with WUWT.
I linked the actual BEST papers and asked you to point us all to where BEST confirms MBH98 and the hockey stick.
I also linked to the report after the release of BEST.

I linked to the BEST site and asked you to point out where BEST has done this.
As well as Muller’s comments from 2004 (which I did NOT obtain from WUWT) I also linked his comments after the release of BEST information.
You’re assertion here:
See that “unexpected” in there? That’s Muller telling you that you are wrong.
What he’s saying is that the crank nonsense from crank-blogger Anthony Watts’ crank blog called WUWT is wrong, and that the scientific consensus among climate scientists turns out to have been (unsurprisingly to normal people) correct after all.’
Is nonsense Vince.

Muller has never spoken to me and I am CONFIDENT that his use of the word UNEXPECTED has nothing at all to do with WUWT, your idea of cranks or a CONFIRMATION of MBH98 and the Hockey Stick.

chubby, given that the project was there to see if MBH98 was right or merely the result of incorrect data homogenisation, and that the result of it is that the data really DOES show the increasing trend that MBH98 does, even the bloody AUTHOR says “Yes”.

1. CO2 concentration has risen by 10% in the past 23 years, but the RSS satellite global lower-troposphere temperature-anomaly record shows warming over that period that is statistically indistinguishable from zero. How come?

2. Aristotle, 2350 years ago, demonstrated that …to argue from “consensus” is a logical fallacy – the headcount fallacy. Some 95% of all published arguments for alarm about our influence on the climate say we must believe the “consensus”. Why was Aristotle wrong?

3. Aristotle, 2350 years ago, demonstrated that to argue that the “consensus” is a “consensus” of experts is a logical fallacy – the fallacy of appeal to authority. What has changed since 2350 years ago to make argument from appeal to authority acceptable rather than fallacious?

4. There has been 0.6 Celsius global warming since 1950. There are 5-7 times more polar bears today than there were in 1950. In what meaningful sense, then, are polar bears a species at imminent threat of extinction caused by global warming?

5. A recent paper shows that a naturally-occurring reduction in cloud cover has had four and a half times more warming effect than man-made increases in CO2 concentrations. Why are you so certain that the recently-published paper is wrong?

6. In the past 247 years – almost a quarter of a millennium – the trend in rainfall over England and Wales shows an increase of just 2 inches/year, or 5%. Why do you regard so insignificant an increase over so long a period as being beyond the natural variability of the climate?

7. Australia’s carbon tax, a typical measure intended to make global warming go away, will cost $150 billion over ten years. In that time, the tax is intended to abate 5% of Australia’s CO2 emissions, which represent 1.2% of global emissions. Do you agree, therefore, that at a cost of $150 billion the Australian scheme, if it succeeds, will abate just 0.06% of global CO2 emissions over ten years, at a cost of $150 billion?

8. The IPCC’s own climate-sensitivity equations show that abating 0.06% of global carbon emissions would reduce CO2 concentration from a predicted business-as-usual 410 microatmospheres to 409.988 microatmospheres, and that this would reduce global mean surface temperature by just 0.0006 Celsius degrees – if the carbon tax succeeded every bit as fully as its framers had intended. Do you consider that spending $150 billion to cut surface temperature by 0.00006 Celsius degrees is a sensible, proportionate, cost-effective use of other people’s money?

9. If Australia’s carbon tax were adopted worldwide, and if it worked every bit as well as its inventors had intended, it would cost $317 trillion to abate the one-sixth of a Celsius degree of warming that is predicted for the current decade. That is $45,000 per head of the global population over the period, or 59% of global GDP? Compared with the 1.23%-of-GDP cost of paying to abate the damage from 1/6 C of warming the day after tomorrow, is it worth spending 59% of GDP today?

10. In 2005 the UN said there would be 50 million climate refugees because of rising sea levels and other effects of global warming by 2010. Where are they?

Oh for crying out loud, did the clown actually go back to quoting Monckton? Pentax, did you really think nobody would notice you quoting a proven pathological liar and political shill as long as you did it in a different thread?

What were you thinking? Were you high? Did you really expect to get away with affirming two such grotesque fictions in a single sentence:

“Of course, BEST has now proven that Muller was wrong in 2004, and that MBH98 is correct in 1998.“

No it didn’t.

How many ways are there of explaining this to you?

BEST studied Earth surface temperatures for the last 250 years.

Therefore, no matter what BEST found, you couldn’t possibly be telling the truth when you claim they confirmed:

1. that Mann’ schtick was “correct,” i.e. that the recent warming trend really is unprecedented in a millennial context because Earth surface temperatures had been comparatively static for century upon century upon century upon century [MH98] (upon century upon century upon century upon century [MBH99])

2. that Muller had been “wrong” to criticize Mann’s algorithm—in other words, Mann’s private, home-coded, non-standard, unexplained, undocumented statistical methods were kosher all along; they had (for example) no a priori tendency to create a hockey-stick shape

It’s logically vertiginous, if not delirious, to believe that either of these claims could have been “proven” by any discovery (no matter what it was) about Earth surface temperatures from1750 onwards.

In exhorting us to believe 2 claims you yourself can’t even think are true, you’re LYING.

Nobody lies with impunity in this house.

Nota bene:

Jeff Harvey has too much integrity to second your lies.

Lotharsson himself will not risk damage to Brand Lotharsson by backing you up.

Smarter people than yourself are washing their hands of your lies, Vince.

You’ll be uncomfortable, unwelcome and unsuccessful at Brad’s Place until you confess your lies and repent.

Last time we met, you voiced confusion about the hockey-stick analogy, thinking perhaps that it referred to the “rapid” warming of the last couple of centuries. I explained that this was merely the “blade” and that a hockey stick also needs a “shaft” or “handle” several times longer than the blade itself.

The first person on Earth to succeed in retracing Mann’s statistical steps, even in broad outline, was the retired Canadian mining mathematician Steve McIntyre, who’d spent years begging, borrowing and stealing the necessary methodological details, which Mann had strangely omitted from his paper.

If you still deny that Mann’s methods were “unexplained” and “undocumented”, then you’re denying a negative—affirming a positive—and the burden of proof is upon you, not us.

If you’re right, however, it should be very easy for you to prove it: simply read MBH98 for yourself and tell us all, step by step, how the authors got from the original dendro data to the final graph.

Succeed and you’ll be hailed as smarter than anyone inside or outside climate science. But don’t get your hopes up. Remember, SEVEN YEARS after the paper was published, the methods of Mann were still a mystery to the mind of man. To quote the Wall St Journal, 2005:

“Mr. McIntyre thinks there are more errors but says his audit is limited because he still doesn’t know the exact computer code Dr. Mann used to generate the graph. Dr. Mann refuses to release it. “Giving them the algorithm would be giving in to the intimidation tactics that these people are engaged in,” he says.””

I repeat, the supposedly scientific paper had already been in print for SEVEN YEARS, and was still a methodological black box.

“Steve McIntyre, who’d spent years begging, borrowing and stealing the necessary methodological details, which Mann had strangely omitted from his paper.”

McIntyre and his hokey methods in service to Smokey Joe Barton and the fake Wegman Report were gutted and hung up to dry years ago “Brad”. Get with the program, or at least try to keep up.

Mann’s data is freely availble, but it’s already been legally established that his personal tools are his intellectual property and are not public property.

The self-appointed, know-nothing auditor strings dupes like youi along with his tales. Any real scientist might – if he were too lazy to get his own – request the data, but never the method (which in any event the NAS verified).

For these comments
[citation sorely needed]
“February 4, 2013
BEST confirmed the hockey stick is correct.
Bad luck Brad.”
February 6, 2013
Of course, BEST has now proven that Muller was wrong in 2004, and that MBH98 is correct in 1998.

“Of course, BEST has now proven that Muller was wrong in 2004, and that MBH98 is correct in 1998.“

No it didn’t.

Yes it did.

It’s difficult to figure out a plainer way of explaining this to Brad – MBH98 presented a temperature reconstruction that showed unprecedented recent warming.

BEST did the same, thus confirming that MBH98 was correct, as have numerous other studies in the intervening years.

they had (for example) no a priori tendency to create a hockey-stick shape

That’s correct – Muller was wrong because Mann’s maths did no such thing.
Interesting that you’ve already forgotten your dishonest insistance that the blade wasn’t the relevant thing here, by admitting that the blade is what it’s all about.

The incompetent and/or fraudulent analysis by McIntyre and McKitrick that claimed the contrary was quickly proven to have been cobbled together in a highly suspect way, presenting only the carefully-cherry-picked fraction of their data that supported their preconceived conclusion.

Man was right all along, as confirmed by the Koch-funded BEST study which showed the same hockey stick.

2. It doesn’t follow that anyone knows which of those data Mann actually USED for MBH98. For instance, a very basic question: how many trees is their graph based on, chek?

3. The inconvenient fact is that you don’t GET a hockey-stick from Mann’s 1998 data UNLESS you follow Mann’s 1988 statistical “methodology.” Which he didn’t disclose.

“…but it’s already been legally established that his personal tools are his intellectual property and are not public property.”

Huh?!

I hate to break it to you, but scientists have to show their working.

Otherwise the whole “methods” section of a scientific paper becomes merely an added extra, like the “Making Of” special feature on the DVD of your favourite movie.

You can choose to believe what “scientists” “conclude” on the basis of mystery methods if you like, and the less-gullible among us can choose not to, and nobody can say who’s being more or less “scientific” because it’s no longer science we’re disagreeing about. It’s about “whose arbitrary, unexplained pronouncements on the natural world do you trust?”

Vince?
You now assert that:
” Man(n) was right all along, as confirmed by the Koch-funded BEST study which showed the same hockey stick.”
You have been linked to the BEST papers.
Where is that particular confirmation?

“Statistician Francis Zwiers of Environment Canada, a government agency, says he now agrees that Dr. Mann’s statistical method “preferentially produces hockey sticks when there are none in the data.” Dr. Zwiers, chief of the Canadian agency’s Center for Climate Modeling and Analysis, says he hasn’t had time to study Dr. Mann’s rebuttals in detail and can’t say who is right.Dr. Mann, while agreeing that his mathematical method tends to find hockey-stick shapes, says this doesn’t mean its results in this case are wrong.”

Wrong. “My research is all based on data sets regarding the Earth’s climate that are freely and widely available to all researchers” – Dr Michael Mann.

You’re just regurgitating denier lies “Brad”. Anything you say without citation will be ignored as just yet more johnny-come-lately conflated denier lies.

Actually, as Dr. Mann’s 2005 letter to Congressman Barton states, Dr. Mann’s data is available on Internet at government and university sites. On page 6 of his letter to Congressman Barton, Dr. Mann even provides the link where the computer code used to make his 1998 “hockey stick” graph can be accessed.

“2. It doesn’t follow that anyone knows which of those data Mann actually USED for MBH98. For instance, a very basic question: how many trees is their graph based on, chek?”

Read the paper and find out, dumbass. It’s hidden in plain sight. Chalk up another blogscience lie that “Brad” swallowed

“3. The inconvenient fact is that you don’t GET a hockey-stick from Mann’s 1998 data UNLESS you follow Mann’s 1988 statistical “methodology.” Which he didn’t disclose.”

See above.
And – “The NRC committee stated that “The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators”. It said “Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium”, though there were substantial uncertainties before about 1600. It added that “Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that ‘the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium’ because the uncertainties inherent in temperature reconstructions for individual years and decades are larger than those for longer time periods and because not all of the available proxies record temperature information on such short timescales.” It noted that “Surface temperature reconstructions for periods prior to the industrial era are only one of multiple lines of evidence supporting the conclusion that climatic warming is occurring in response to human activities, and they are not the primary evidence”
– NRC report June 2006.

Mann’s results have since been confirmed by other studies many times (maybe ten, I lost count but I frankly I’m not getting into a bloody hockey stick debate here and now in 20fucking12 because of some know-nothing turning up knowing fuck all..

You’re just another dumbassdenier repeater who – like Ben Santer said years ago – thinks that fixating on Mann and/or the hockey stick will kill the IPCC. It won;t.

Remember those citations in future, shitbucket. Otherwise it goes without saying you’re just spraying old, old ancient and worthless denier shit around, Braddyboy. And that isn’t worth answering.